Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • GagruleLive
  • Armenia profile

Turkish police struggled Sunday to track down a gunman who attacked New Year’s Eve

January 1, 2017 By administrator

A video capture appears to show a man with a gun entering the Reina nightclub in Istanbul where at least 39 people were killed and 69 others wounded. (EPA)

Revelers at a popular Istanbul nightclub, killing at least 39 people, including one Canadian, before fleeing.

The gunman shot his way into the Reina nightclub around 1:15 a.m., just over an hour into the new year, killing a police officer and a civilian as he entered before opening fire at random inside. At least 69 people were injured in the carnage.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting.

Turkey’s state-run news agency says that nearly two-thirds of the people killed in the Istanbul nightclub attack were foreign nationals, reporting that 25 of the 39 dead were citizens of other countries.

Many were from the Middle East, including Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, although countries from India to Belgium reported their citizens among the casualties.

Among the early reports of those killed and wounded:

  • Turkish media report at least seven Saudi nationals and four Iraqis were among those killed inside the club. A Saudi news channel says 10 of the wounded are from Saudi Arabia.
  • The Lebanese Foreign Ministry says three citizens were killed and four wounded. The ministry said in a statement Sunday that its diplomats in Turkey are still searching local hospitals to make sure there are no Lebanese victims going uncounted or missing.
  • Jordan’s Foreign Ministry says three Jordanians were among those killed. A Kuwaiti diplomat in Turkey says one Kuwaiti is dead and five others wounded.
  • France’s foreign minister says one French citizen was killed and three others wounded.
  • French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement that a woman with both French and Tunisian citizenship died in the attack early Sunday. Ayrault says the woman’s Tunisian husband also died.
  • Belgium’s foreign ministry says one Belgian national was killed.
  • Anadolu said a female security guard at the club, 29-year-old Hatice Karcilar, was among the dead.
  • The Israeli woman who died has been identified as 18-year-old Leanne Nasser from the Israeli-Arab town of Tira.

    There were emotional scenes in front of a city morgue where those shot dead were brought for identification. Some relatives cried out and fell to the ground as they apparently learned the fate of their loved ones.

  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned the attack, saying Turkey will relentlessly continue fighting such violence.

    “I vehemently condemn the terror attack in Istanbul’s Ortakoy neighbourhood in the first hours of 2017,” he said in a written statement Sunday.

  • At the time of the shooting, about 600 people were inside the club, located near a bridge that crosses the Bosphorus Strait. The venue is popular with wealthy locals and tourists and usually features heavy security, CBC’s Nil Koksal said, reporting from Istanbul.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Club, İstanbul, shooting

BREAKING NEWS: Four people are dead after a shooting at a mall outside Seattle. State Police said the gunman is still at large.

September 23, 2016 By administrator

breaking-newsA shooting at a mall in Burlington, Wash., left four people dead and the police searching for the gunman on Friday night, the Washington State Patrol said.
A spokesman for the patrol, Sgt. Mark Francis, said on Twitter that the gunman had left before the police arrived and that the shopping center, the Cascade Mall, was being evacuated.
It was not clear, according to Sergeant Francis, if there was more than one gunman.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Burlington, mall, shooting, Wash

Breaking news: Germany Munich shooting

July 22, 2016 By administrator

munich-shootingA major police operation is underway at the Olympia shopping center (OEZ) in Munich. Shots have been fired and several people have been reported injured. Read the latest here.

20.23 Police have said there are unconfirmed reports of more violence and possible gunfire in the city center, asking people to avoid public areas as the situation is unclear:

18.20 German train operator Deutsche Bahn has evacuated Munich main train station.

18.15 Munich police issued a statement on their Facebook page reporting that witnesses saw three different individuals with firearms.

18.04 Police issued warnings in English asking people to avoid public areas because of gunfire:

Media reports in Germany cited local police saying that several people were injured and some may have been killed as shots were fired in the Olympia shopping center (OEZ) in Munich, southern Germany on Friday evening.

Police said the situation remained unclear but that several people had been injured:

https://youtu.be/a_BwoZlxiew

https://youtu.be/uNh9jXzq0U0

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Germany, munich, shooting

Shooting at civilian targets internationally prohibited – Armenian expert

May 1, 2016 By administrator

f5725dcfe1f6cb_5725dcfe1f702.thumbShooting at civilians or civilian targets to destroy them rather than at the military targets nearby is prohibited irrespective of what kind of weapons is used, expert in international law Vladimir Vardanyan told Tert.am.

“Using any kind of weapons against civilians is prohibited by international humanitarian law,” Mr Vardanyan said.

“As regards shelling of civilian targets, I should note that it is not the Geneva Convention. Rather, it is a provision on military targets, which deals with means and the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions partly regulates it. But the logic is clear.”

Secondly, the conflicting parties are obliged to deploy their military facilities as far as possible from civilian facilities to prevent damage to civilian facilities.

Elaborating on the types of weapons, Mr Vardanyan said that some of them are prohibited. On the other hand, the methods of using acceptable weapons can be banned as well.

Azerbaijan has recently used prohibited weapons on numerous occasions.

Recent expert discussions have shown that Armenia cannot apply to the International Court now for the simple reason that Azerbaijan did not ratified the First Protocol. And neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan has ratified the the Rome Statute.

However, Armenia could apply to the UN or to the European Court – and it actually did.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Azerbaijan, civilian targets, internationally, Karabakh, prohibited, shooting

KARABAKH An Armenian Azeri victim of a shooting in Artsakh

March 18, 2016 By administrator

arton123359-480x321The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh said that Artyom Varderesyan (born 1996), defense forces of Artsakh, was killed by a shot from the Azeri positions on 17 March. The survey Armenian side on the circumstances of the shooting is in progress. The Ministry of Defense of Artsakh sent condolences to the family and relatives of the fallen soldier, who was a volunteer. The Azerbaijani side has more than 400 times

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Azeri, Karabakh, shooting, victim

Three people, including two Americans, killed in Jordan shooting

November 9, 2015 By administrator

Soldiers watch tanks advancing as they take part in joint Jordan-US maneuvers in Mudawwara on May 18, 2015. (AFP photo)

Soldiers watch tanks advancing as they take part in joint Jordan-US maneuvers in Mudawwara on May 18, 2015. (AFP photo)

Two American military instructors and one South African have been killed after a Jordanian officer opened fire at a US-funded training facility near the Jordanian capital, Amman, a government spokesman says.

Mohammed Momani said the incident took place on Monday at the Jordan International Police Training Center (JIPTC) in al-Mowager in east Amman.

He also said two other American instructors and four Jordanians were injured in the gun attack, adding that the assailant was shot dead by other officers at the scene.

The facility is said to be used to train Iraqi and Palestinian security forces. American contractors are reportedly sent to the center to help Jordanian instructors.

It is not immediately clear what prompted the attack.

Jordan is a key ally of the United States in the Middle East as well as an active part of the so-called US-led coalition against Daesh Takfiri terror group. The US is using Jordanian airfields to station fighter jets for its military campaign in Syria.

The United States and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against alleged Daesh extremists inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate since September last year.

Jordan also hosts hundreds of American military personnel as part of a program to allegedly reinforce the kingdom’s defense.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: American, Jordan, shooting

Azerbaijan shooting makes it impossible to remove damaged Russia truck from Armenia road

November 7, 2015 By administrator

Azery shootingA Russian truck was damaged Thursday in the Tavush Province of Armenia, and due to the shots fired by Azerbaijan.

The incident took place on the Baghanis-Voskepar motorway.

The tires of the vehicle were punctured and its engine was damaged in the shooting.

The truck cannot be removed from the main road for two days now, Baghanis village mayor Narek Sahakyan on Saturday told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

He noted that they had attempted to remove the vehicle from the road on Friday evening, but they could not due to the Azerbaijani shooting.

In Sahakyan’s words, now the villagers prefer not to travel along the Baghanis-Voskepar motorway, since it is not safe.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Azerbaijan, Russian, shooting, truck

DW: Turkey is shooting itself in the foot #ArmenianGenocide

April 28, 2015 By administrator

191293Turkey has badly hurt its international ties by threatening Germany and other partner nations over their assessment of the Armenian Genocide a century ago, Deutsche Welle says.

Turkey has rarely launched rhetorical attacks on so many different international players in such a short time. The pope came in for his share, as did the European Parliament.

Then it was Austria’s turn, before Germany, France, Russia and the USA were also all verbally assaulted – in a series of foreign office statements issued at the rate of almost one a minute – for the positions they have taken in the debate on the correct word to give to the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman authorities one hundred years ago.

In the case of Germany, Ankara stressed that the Turkish people would neither forgive nor forget the words of President Joachim Gauck, who has spoken of Armenian Genocide.

The presidents of the USA, Russia and France – Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Francois Hollande – drew Ankara’s ire because they also mentioned the massacre. And Obama didn’t even use the “G-word” out of consideration for his country’s important NATO ally.

Within just a few hours, Ankara thus verbally attacked three of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and, in the case of Germany, also its most important trading partner. With only a few weeks to go to the Turkish parliamentary elections on June 7, this probably appeals to right-leaning voters – one possible motivation behind the wave of blustering statements.

But Turkey will have to realize that such exaggerated accesses of rage do more harm than good in the sphere of foreign affairs, Deutsche Welle notes.

For a start, the report says, there is barely a single government politician in the targeted countries who takes the tirades from Ankara seriously: many are the occasions when Turkey has announced political and economic reprisals against partner nations in great indignation, only to get back to business as usual without losing another word on the matter.

Then there is the fact that the furious Turkish outbursts reinforce doubts about how reliable this partner to the West actually is. To a point, it is understandable, in view of the country’s domestic political situation and the decades spent denying the crime, that the Turkish government rejects the application of the term “genocide” to the massacre of Armenians. But the way Ankara has almost broken up its friendship with important allies in a spectacular gesture just because they did not agree with the Turkish view of things could cause some politicians and officials in the West to think again.

For some time, Turkey has been taking pleasure in presenting itself as a regional power whose irresistible rise is being hindered by foreign ones, because Europe and the USA fear a new rival. This strange view of the world is part of the reason for the heated debate on the Armenian issue, and was frequently promulgated in the past few days in particular by the government-friendly press in Ankara and some advisers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It may be that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party can score with nationalistic voters in the Turkish election campaign by this means. But internationally, it is a course that will lead to isolation.

Related links:

Deutsche Welle. ‘Turkey is shooting itself in the foot’

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: Armenian, foot, Genocide, itself, shooting, Turkey

Russian soldier in Armenia detained in mass killing of local family

January 13, 2015 By administrator

armenia-murder-russian-serviceman.siA Russian soldier suspected of killing six members of in the same family in Armenia and wounding a seventh, an infant boy, has been detained on the Turkish border. The serviceman from Russia’s 102 Military Base went AWOL with his weapons Monday morning.

Six family members, including a two-year-old girl, were shot dead in Armenia’s second-largest city of Gyumri on Monday at about midday. The family’s only survivor, a six-month-old boy, was operated on for gunshot wounds in the chest and is currently in a stable yet serious condition, Interfax reported.

A criminal case has been launched, and serviceman Valery Permyakov, from a Russian military base in Gyumri, is suspected of the murders, as boots bearing his name were found in the house of the murdered family.

“In the house of the slain Avetisyan family, investigators found military boots, marked on the inside with the name Valery Permyakov, who serves at a Russian military base. The murder was committed with an AK-74,” Sona Truzyan, an official at Armenia’s Investigative Committee, told Interfax.

Earlier on Monday, at 6 am it was discovered that an armed serviceman was absent from his post, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that a search for the man was under way.

Investigators believe that the killings most likely arose in connection with a crime of passion, RIA Novosti reported.

The Russian Embassy in Armenia has expressed its condolences, saying in a statement that the two countries are working together on the case. Russian officials are providing all the necessary assistance to solve the crime as soon as possible, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his Armenian counterpart, Eduard Nalbandyan.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Army, cis, Crime, police, Russian, shooting, Violence

Charlie Hebdo shooting: Who are the suspects?

January 8, 2015 By administrator

150107233102-paris-attack-suspects-03-large-169By Jethro Mullen, CNN

(CNN)One of them already spent time in jail for ties to terrorism. The other came to the attention of police investigating a prison-break plot.

The Kouachi brothers are the main suspects in the deadly terrorist attack on the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, are both French citizens. They returned from war-torn Syria in the summer, USA Today reported, but it’s unclear if they had any recent connections with international terrorist groups.

While an intense manhunt unfolds in France to nab them, the third suspect has reportedly turned himself in. He is 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad.

Here’s what we know about the suspects who have been identified at this stage:

CHERIF KOUACHI

The younger of the two brothers being hunted by French authorities had already spent time in jail for links to terrorism.

Cherif Kouachi, a 32-year-old French citizen, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 for being part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in Iraq.

He was arrested in January 2005, at the age of 22, when he and another man were about to set off for Syria, via which they planned to reach Iraq where war was raging.

Kouachi’s lawyer Vincent Ollivier said at the time that his client’s profile was more “pot-smoker from the projects than an Islamist.”

“He smokes, drinks, doesn’t sport a beard and has a girlfriend before marriage,” Ollivier told the French newspaper Liberation the month after his client’s arrest.

But at trial, Kouachi was described as coming under the influence of a radical Muslim preacher, Farid Benyettou, at the Addawa mosque in Paris’s 19th arrondissement.

Kouachi’s cursory training for his planned mission in Iraq involved jogging in Paris’s hilly Buttes-Chaumont park and being shown the basics of operating a Kalashnikov by a man he met at the mosque, French newspaper Le Monde reported at the time.

Kouachi told the court that he was motivated by American troops’ abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But he said he was relieved when he was arrested.

“The closer the departure got, the more I wanted to turn back,” he told the judge, according to Le Monde. “But if I chickened out, I was in danger of looking like a coward.”

The court said Kouachi had wanted to attack Jewish targets in France but was told by Benyettou that France, unlike Iraq, wasn’t “a land of jihad,” Bloomberg News reported at the time.

Prosecutors presented no evidence to the court of any plans to carry out attacks in France, according to a New York Times report.

Kouachi and six other people, including Benyettou, were convicted and sentenced to prison in 2008 for their roles in the recruitment ring.

Kouachi didn’t actually go to prison after the trial because half of his three-year sentence was suspended and he had already spent enough time in pre-trial detention, Bloomberg reported. He was released from custody before the trial.

A former pizza delivery boy, Kouachi was working as a fishmonger in a supermarket at the time of the trial, according to French media.

He told the court that his main interest at the time was rap music, according to Bloomberg.

In 2010, Kouachi was charged in connection with a foiled plot to break out Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, an Algerian Islamist imprisoned for bombing a Paris commuter rail station in 1995. But public prosecutors later dropped the charges, according to Le Monde.

Kouachi was born in Paris to Algerian parents, who died when he and his brother were still young, Liberation reported.

He was raised in a home in Rennes, a city in the northwestern French region of Brittany, according to the newspaper. He obtained a qualification in sports education before moving back to Paris, it said.

SAID KOUACHI

Much less is known about the elder Kouachi brother, who doesn’t appear to have as high a profile as his younger sibling.

Said Kouachi is 34 and also a citizen of France, according to French authorities.

CNN affiliate BFMTV reported that police found an ID document of Said Kouachi during the investigation.

“It was their only mistake,” said Dominique Rizet, BFMTV’s police and justice consultant.

The photo of Said Kouachi released by police shows him with close cropped dark hair and a short beard on his chin. He’s wearing a gray top with a collar.

BFMTV reported that like his brother, he was born in Paris and was known to police.

The Liberation report suggested that at the time of Cherif Kouachi’s arrest in 2005, the two brothers were both staying in Paris with a French man who had converted to Islam.

Said Kouachi’s name came to the attention of police during the investigation into the 2010 prison-break plot, but there wasn’t enough evidence to keep investigating him, Le Monde reported.

It’s unclear at this point if the brothers had any recent connections with international terrorist groups.

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are mapping the suspects’ relationships for clues, including digital records. They are running the suspects’ names through databases and looking for connections with ISIS and al Qaeda.

HAMYD MOURAD

The third suspect has already turned himself in to police, a source close to the case told the news agency Agence France-Presse. Hamyd Mourad, 18, surrendered to police late Wednesday after seeing his name mentioned on social media, the source told AFP.

Mourad is in the final year of high school in the northeastern French city of Charleville-Mezieres, BFMTV reported.

He was questioned by police and taken into custody, the broadcaster reported.

It remained unclear what role, if any, Mourad might have had in the attack. Reports in French media citing people close to him, as well comments on social networks, suggested he was at school in Charleville-Mezieres at the time of the attack.

CNN’s Evan Perez and Lonzo Cook contributed to this report.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Charlie Hebdo, shooting, suspects

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2

Support Gagrule.net

Subscribe Free News & Update

Search

GagruleLive with Harut Sassounian

Can activist run a Government?

Wally Sarkeesian Interview Onnik Dinkjian and son

https://youtu.be/BiI8_TJzHEM

Khachic Moradian

https://youtu.be/-NkIYpCAIII
https://youtu.be/9_Xi7FA3tGQ
https://youtu.be/Arg8gAhcIb0
https://youtu.be/zzh-WpjGltY





gagrulenet Twitter-Timeline

Tweets by @gagrulenet

Archives

Books

Recent Posts

  • Pashinyan Government Pays U.S. Public Relations Firm To Attack the Armenian Apostolic Church
  • Breaking News: Armenian Former Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan Pashinyan is agent
  • November 9: The Black Day of Armenia — How Artsakh Was Signed Away
  • @MorenoOcampo1, former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, issued a Call to Action for Armenians worldwide.
  • Medieval Software. Modern Hardware. Our Politics Is Stuck in the Past.

Recent Comments

  • Baron Kisheranotz on Pashinyan’s Betrayal Dressed as Peace
  • Baron Kisheranotz on Trusting Turks or Azerbaijanis is itself a betrayal of the Armenian nation.
  • Stepan on A Nation in Peril: Anything Armenian pashinyan Dismantling
  • Stepan on Draft Letter to Armenian Legal Scholars / Armenian Bar Association
  • administrator on Turkish Agent Pashinyan will not attend the meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in